The Blooding of Jack Absolute (17 page)

My reputation, thought Jack, is already buggered.

There was only one way to redeem it. To make the Angel before St Clement’s struck half past and he forfeited the match. And
then, of course, to win. For if he did not …

The metal tokens clinked in the maid’s cap as Jack shrugged into the bitter wind.

St Clement’s tolled the half-hour as he walked through the Angel’s door. Though the room was crowded he saw Craster immediately,
for he was silhouetted against a pink jacket. Horace was standing behind his employer, arms folded, while Jack’s cousin harangued
an elderly gentleman in a dark-blue coat and grey waistcoat.

The room was crowded, a feat considering its size for it occupied the entire first floor of the large tavern. A sea of mainly
dark wool was broken by islands of green – the baize of half a dozen billiards tables. Five were in use while the sixth at
the centre of the room was surrounded by the arguing men. Jack, unnoticed at the door, began to push through.

He arrived in time to hear Craster declare, ‘I say again, rules cannot be gainsaid. Straight up noon was the time agreed but
the half has tolled and the challenged is not here. Westminster must forfeit.’

Cheers outweighed the boos; the Angel was Harrow’s tavern in Town and barely a dozen Westminsters had forced their way in.
Three of them were Mohocks though and Marks especially had a carrying voice and the mind of an aspirant lawyer.

‘Mr Absolute displays his ignorance with his every utterance. The noble game of billiards has no “rules”. It has laws!’ The
Westminsters jeered and cheered. ‘Show me what
law
has been broken here. Give me chapter and verse or, by God, I say we give my friend till one.’

‘There’s precedent, sir,’ whined a Harrovian, one of the hulks Craster had brought to the Five Chimneys two nights before.
‘And English law
is
precedent.’

‘Precedent, my arse. Name ’em, every whore’s son of ’em,’ thundered Marks.

‘Gennelmen, some restraint, pray,’ the elderly gent, obviously the umpire of the match and, from his accent, a professional
of the baize, interposed. ‘There’s unnerstandins in our sport, wivin and wivout the laws. Now, it’s true to say, that if the
Challenged has not shown by now—’

‘But he has.’

Jack’s voice, quiet enough, still pierced the hum. ‘Jack,’ Fenby cried. ‘You are here. You are alive.’

‘Yes to both.’ He turned to the umpire. ‘I am sorry, sir, to have delayed you. Business. Unavoidable.’ He looked at Pink Gent
Horace, who stood agape, then shifted his gaze to Craster. ‘A temporary inconvenience, I assure you.’

Craster’s large mouth was opening and closing like a trout jerked suddenly to the bank. Finally he spluttered. ‘And the stake?’

Jack scratched his chin. ‘The stake? Hmm. The stake. Now where …’ Then reaching inside to the sodden inner pocket of his coat,
he pulled out the maid’s cap, shaking it till it clinked. ‘Sorry about the receptacle …’

The umpire smiled. ‘Was that your business, sir?’ On Jack’s shrug the whole company laughed, save for Craster and his shadows.
He’d turned to Horace, who shook his head quite definitely.

Craster turned back. ‘I think we need to count it.’

This drew a hiss, and not only from the Westminsters. ‘Do you question the gennelman’s honour?’ the umpire asked Craster.
Turning to Jack, he said, ‘You are a gennelman, ain’t you?’

Jack replied quietly, keeping his eyes on his cousin. ‘I am.’

‘Then a gennelman’s word shall not be questioned. Not while I preside.’ He glared at Craster who flinched. ‘Your stakes, if
you please.’

Two bags were handed over and if Jack’s weighed lighter than Harrow’s guineas the umpire did not indicate it. The
Westminsters then pulled Jack to one of the settles that paralleled the long sides of the table, while the Harrovians did
the same with his cousin.

As Jack sank with a groan, his friends crowded around. ‘What happened to you, Jack?’ said Fenby.

‘What happened to
you?
You deserted me.’

‘Not fair, Jack. Marks was snoring, Ede had disappeared with some … woman,’ both fellows had the decency to look ashamed,
‘while you seemed much enamoured of our new friend over there. You matched him, b … b … bumper for bumper. Then he whispered
something and you said, “Lead me to ’em,” and when I tried to dissuade you, you d … d … damn’d me for a half-blind, one-handed
stoker and left. I tried to follow but you were out of my b … broken sight in a moment.’ Fenby pushed his second pair of glasses,
old and much entwined with thread, up his nose.

Jack rubbed his forehead, sighed. ‘I’m sorry, lads. The Devil got inside me. That Devil,’ he said, looking across to where
Craster was muttering to Horace. ‘The foulest of tricks was played upon me,’ he shuddered at the memory of his awakening,
‘and worse.’

‘Worse? What could be worse?’ queried Ede.

Through his fingers, in a low tone, Jack said, ‘Our bag of guineas? It’s not.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Marks, alarmed.

Jack shook his head, first in exasperation, then in pain. ‘What do you think I mean? Those who stole our night, stole our
gold.’

The gasps were sensibly muted but distinct. ‘Then, if you lose, we’re b … bug …’ stuttered Fenby.

‘Quite,’ said Ede. ‘So …’

‘So I must win,’ said Jack. ‘Yet even if I do, my cousin knows no guineas lie within that cap. Win or lose, he’ll somehow
force a look.’ He shushed the alarm. ‘So at match end, be ready to make a bold brush of it.’ His head indicated the door.
‘We’ll need to leave with both bags and fast.’

‘Gennelmen, your positions, please,’ the white-haired umpire called.

Jack rose with a sigh, his head throbbing again. He leaned toward the rack, pulled out cue after cue, sighting along them,
rolling them on the baize until satisfied, then turned back. ‘Fetch me water, boys, a bucket of it.’ Something bubbled up
from his stomach and releasing it, he added, ‘Make that two buckets. One empty.’

He walked carefully to the centre-side of the table. The umpire began to lay down the conditions of this match. Best of three
games: two to one hundred points, the third, if required, to the man ahead at a half-hourglass. While he explained other limits
and variations – for billiards’ laws could vary according to the house – Craster spoke from the side of his mouth.

‘You’re a cheating dog. Shall I tell the company I know your cap’s as vacant as a Jew’s heart?’

‘And shall I tell them how you know? That you got yon man to dog me all night, put a tot in every one of my pints, drown me
with arrack punch, leave me with a whore?’

‘You’ve no proof. Whereas I will have when you open that purse.’

‘And that I’ll never do.’

‘You’ll be forced to when you lose.’

The age of this conflict suddenly caused Jack to speak from an older tongue. ‘Ess, boy, but I bain’t goin’ t’ lose, see.’

The umpire stepped to them, coin in hand. ‘Your call, sir,’ he said to Craster.

‘Heads.’

The coin spinning through the light made Jack’s head hurt.

‘Tails! Your choice, sir.’

Jack shook his head gently, regretting even that much movement. His vision was adding a slight corona to every object he regarded.
He looked at the three balls on the table, trying to bring double images into one. At the far end, the single red ball was
on its dot, while before him the two white
balls were behind the inked line that marked off the top third of the table, both balls within the ‘D’ at the centre of that
line.

Leaning forward, he picked up the white ball that had a black spot and dropped it into his pocket. ‘After you,’ he said. Making
Craster commence was only partly to put pressure on his opponent; he wanted to remind himself how the game worked, such knowledge
seemingly driven from his head by the excesses of the night.

As Craster placed his unmarked white ball within the ‘D’, sighted, shot, Jack’s eyes closed. Thus it was not the vision of
white on red, nor the balls’ subsequent trajectories around the table, that brought to his mind a sudden clarity. It was the
sound. The ‘clack’, the sweetness of ivory on ivory, brought several instances to mind, from the moment his father first introduced
him to the game, through every subsequent hour which, if added together, would total months of his young life.
That sound!
How he had sought it out in houses both private and public, in St James’s clubs and taverns much like this one; more often
in these, for in these murkier waters the sharks swam and once they had realized his enthusiasm and his limited means, they
would usually play him for the price of the table and a stake that would still buy them a port and pie.

Other sounds came, the shot was either fortunate or a sign of high skill, and each half of the partisan crowd reacted accordingly.

‘Three points for the pot-red hazard,’ the umpire declared, fishing the red from its pocket and resetting it on its spot.
Craster must have mistaken Jack’s closed eyes for apprehension, for when they opened he raised his eyebrows before settling
for his next shot. This was easier, a straight pot and he missed it, leaving both balls a foot apart and away from the top
cushion.

‘Your innings, sir,’ said Craster, through a tight mouth.

Jack placed his ball, stood back, thought as he chalked his cue. His opponent had opened brilliantly with a difficult shot
and failed dismally with an easy one. Craster had shown he was
perhaps over-excited and not a little surprised at having to compete at all.

Jack had no doubt he could match him in flashiness. But, as he bent to the table to do just that, the sudden change of elevation
reminded him in surging blood that his head was precariously positioned on his neck and brought the words of a sharper who’d
been teaching him tricks one afternoon: ‘Tricks is easy, once you know ’em, and every fool can play ’em. But it’s a simple
game at bottom, young sir. And simple knows best.’

So he played the simplest shot in the game. The more tricky shot would be to hit both balls, the ‘cannon hazard’, striking
both the red and his opponent’s white ball with his own, then continue to play them, racking up a score. But it was a difficult
initial shot. So he went for the red instead, taking it on a thick edge so as to bounce it only a little off the top cushion
and send his own ball off it into the top pocket.

‘In-off red,’ said the umpire, digging out his ball, rolling it back down the table to him. ‘Three points.’

All there knew that Jack had chosen safety over adventure.

‘He’s feart,’ said Pink Gent Horace, his Somerset accent strong. ‘You’ll take ’un fast, zirr.’

Jack smiled, bent carefully to his next shot. Since they were playing for totals and not against the clock in this game, he
could, within reason, take all the time he desired and, with the simplest shots, keep Craster off the table.

A combination of simple hazards – in-off his opponent’s white; in-off red; pot-red – meant that Jack chalked up a score of
forty-five before a little error off the cushion left him a tricky shot that he missed. Fortunately, he did not have long
to dwell on his malaise for Craster only made a break of ten before an attempted cannon failed and left Jack in a fine position,
with all three balls bunched up in the corner. To play them all was now the simplest shot available.

‘Fill your boots, Absolute,’ Marks called out.

‘You know,’ said Jack, ‘I rather think I shall.’

He nudged all three balls around the corner of the table, spurning any opportunities to pot, striking each ball on each shot.
It was dull stuff, the voice of the umpire reflecting that with his metronomic, ‘Two. Two. Two.’ But it delighted Jack and
his friends to see their opponents’ shoulders slump ever lower.

At ninety-seven, he doubled the red into the top pocket. ‘That’s three points for the pot-red hazard and game to Westminster,’
called the umpire. Jack laid his cue gently on the baize before he was engulfed by enthusiastic back slaps of the Westminsters.
The treatment was not salutary, and Jack lowered himself into the settle as swiftly as he was able. Once again, away from
the baize and its challenges, he was immediately reminded of his condition in jabs and lurches.

‘Water,’ he gasped.

‘All right, Jack?’ Fenby looked at him anxiously as he passed the bucket.

Jack’s mouth was so rank he could not form words. He drank deep. Usually he avoided water but this seemed sweet enough. ‘Have
you a plan for a sudden exeunt?’ he whispered hoarsely.

‘The beginnings of one, aye,’ Marks said.

‘Then find an end, too,’ Jack muttered, ‘and fast.’ The pause had reminded him of his frailty. He didn’t wish to play a third
game.

The umpire called, ‘Time, gennelmen,’ and Jack moved to the table. Harrow had used the little break to discuss tactics, for
a cacophony of coughs greeted Jack as he placed his ball within the ‘D’ and sighted on the red.

Fuck them, he thought. There was a shot he could play to open that, if successful, would put Craster on the back foot immediately.
It was one that, if he practised it a hundred times, he’d make about eighty of them, and involved bringing both the red and
his own white back down the length of the table, and leaving them behind the baulk line. His opponent was not allowed to play
his first shot behind that line and
would have to play up the table, try to hit on a rebound. He’d miss. And Jack could once again ‘fill his boots’.

It required speed and angle. He had the second but not the first. His own white fetched up sweet and close to the cushion.
But the red settled just in front of the line.

‘No score,’ said the umpire as Craster stepped up. He did not smirk now, his heavy brow scrunched in concentration. And he’d
learnt, for he did not try anything fancy. A straight pot-red and he was away.

Jack was allowed back on the table just twice. Both times, a developing tremor cost him. Third time on the table, Craster
never forsook it.

‘That’s game Harrow, and all square,’ called the umpire to loud acclamation. Jack laid his cue down, went and sat, head in
hands, sheltering his eyes from the window-glare that had grown as the sun moved around. It had become hot, the smells within
the room rank; someone threw the tall window open. The Westminsters, even his friends, were silent around him. Gulping more
water, he allowed himself a groan.